A recent survey by TRUSTe reported in the NYTimes showed that over 90% of people surveyed thought that trust is 'really' or 'somewhat' important.

75 percent of respondents agreed with the statement, “The Internet is not well regulated, and naïve users can easily be taken advantage of.”

Even some of the experts have their tales.

The FTC recently warned the behavioural targeting industry that legislation was imminent if they didn't improve their approach, and investors got the message with many behavioural targeting startups disappearing.

Some of the big 'spy networks' slightly reined in their data retention, in what was effectively only spin, while they continued to pursue what many see as 'privacy infringing' projects. Google's phone tracking was just released to go with it's Chrome tracker and is to be integrated into gmail tracker.

While I encourage improved services, I suspect this business model, which relies on spying on you and selling the information to advertisers or whoever else may see value in it, is perhaps not the ideal.

It can only lead to tears.

I presume if google can stay on course, tracking everything we do to spot an opportunity to sell us something, the smaller firms are really going to be following their example and track away too.

Self-regulation equals no regulation.

Where does it stop? We hear a lot about identity theft and fraud statistics, in fact more than we need to. It's a bit boring. I did mention what the trend would be, last year, and guess what, things aren't any better. Nothing has changed. The bad news isn't news.

Behavioural targeting will be of as much use to scammers as it will to 'real' marketers. Hopefully it won't take too long for them to catch on and turn all consumers against anything that arrives in their inbox or appears in a page where every click leads you down the road to being exploited.

Way to go, wreck the web.

Advertisers need to wake up. Click fraud is a global industry. The 'facts' you are getting are bulldust. TRUSTe reports:

41% delete cookies.
40% use anonymity plugins and software.
36 % give false information when registering for Web sites.
11 % use a proxy server to mask their internet usage.

The list goes on. The 'data' on which advertisers are basing their marketing decisions is flawed. It is rubbish. This may have been ok in a debt financed boom where everybody was spending madly, but it will be a real issue in a recession/depression. The firms trying to use immorally and unethically obtained tracking data will, we hope, eventually go broke.

You can't trust that data.

The most obvious question is:

If we can't protect our identity/financial data, then how the hell are they supposed to protect our tracking data?

If we can't control our identities then how can we control our personal information.

While I encourage vigilance and that means keeping an eye on the alarming statistics, they aren't exactly unexpected. Just like the civil unrest we see emerging across the globe.

I think that more effort needs to go towards overcoming the 'living in denial', the current approach is never going to fix it.

Voodoo and snake oil will not prevail. It is time for a new approach, the old one is broken. Get over it.

I'd like to see the public have a different view of the internet.

“The Internet is a well regulated, and safe place where users can freely interact and learn safely, and trust that evildoers will be held accountable".

That internet won't exist unless we make it so. Self regulation will see it become just another Wall St, rather than the information super-highway to the future we all deserve.

The time is now. We need to put the proper foundations in place for a global community. Identity, liberty, privacy and most importantly accountability.

If you doubt what I suggest, just imagine if the public trust in the internet dived as quickly as it has in bankers. It is going to happen if we don't fix it now. There is a way to enable privacy, provide meaningful data for marketers, manufacturers and governments and make the genuine experience a genuinely good experience. I'm optimistic.

If we do fix it - the potential rewards are infinite - for everyone.